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Knowing the Universe

This page explores how players learn that other regions, galaxies, and orbital systems exist — separately from their ability to reach them.

It does not describe final game behavior. It captures the current direction and unresolved design choices.

Goal

Make the universe partly unknown to every player at any given moment, and turn the act of finding out what is out there into its own gameplay surface — distinct from the act of reaching it.

Secondary goals:

  • Give the explorer playstyle a real, marketable output: intel.
  • Avoid presenting players with an omniscient universe map by default — that turns the map into a logistics tool, not a discovery surface.
  • Decouple "I know System X exists" from "I can travel to System X". The two should be separate investments.

Core Problem

In the current model, the universe map is fully visible: every region, every galaxy, every orbital system is observable from any player's UI. The map doubles as a logistics planning tool and a reference for what exists.

This is fine for an MVP but creates two design holes:

  • No explorer archetype. A player whose preferred contribution is "find out what is out there" has nothing distinctive to do — everyone already sees the same map.
  • Conflation of knowledge with reach. Under Player-Built Connectivity, Direction 5 separates the reach of a player (research-driven gate-target radius) from the knowledge of what targets exist. The universe map being globally visible contradicts that separation: a player can target any region within their reach, regardless of whether they "should" know it is there.

This page addresses both: it carves out a discovery layer that an explorer archetype can own, and it makes "I know that region exists" a per-player property the rest of the game can rely on.

Working Directions

1. Active scouting — probes and survey fleets

A player dispatches a probe or survey fleet outward to investigate specific cells of the universe map. The probe travels to its destination, gathers information, and either returns or transmits its findings.

  • Probes are cheap and slow — a fire-and-forget exploration vehicle, not a combat asset.
  • A probe's report reveals one specific region (or galaxy) it visited, its position, and surface characteristics (rough stellar-object summary, visible infrastructure, ownership signals if any).
  • Probes can be intercepted in flight and destroyed by hostile players — adding a small combat surface to exploration.
  • Different probe tiers reveal different depths: a basic probe surfaces "region X exists at position (q, r)"; a deep-survey probe surfaces "and here are its orbital systems".

2. Passive observation — telescopes and sensor arrays

Buildings constructed on a player's existing holdings (colonies, frontiers) passively reveal nearby regions over time.

  • A telescope or large radio dish has a range measured in grid cells. Regions inside the range are revealed automatically — slowly at first, then with more depth as the instrument levels up.
  • Range scales with the instrument's tier and with the size of the host stellar object (a planet supports bigger instruments than a moon).
  • This rewards entrenched players: a long-running colony with a high-tier telescope sees deep into its neighbourhood for free.
  • Passive observation has limits — it cannot reveal hidden / cloaked infrastructure, and it does not reach far galaxies (those still require active probing).

3. Intel trade — knowledge as a tradeable resource

Player-specific knowledge of the universe is itself an asset. Players can share, sell, or steal intel.

  • A player can hand a known cell to an ally for free, creating soft alliance bonds (you know what I know).
  • A market for intel emerges: explorers sell discovered regions to settlers; pirates sell weak target locations to raiders.
  • Intel can be stolen through espionage — see Direction 4.
  • Knowledge of a cell is a per-player flag. Selling intel does not transfer it away from the seller; both parties now know the cell.

4. Espionage — extracting intel from other players

An espionage operation against another player can reveal what they know, not just what they have. A successful operation copies a slice of the target's knowledge map into the attacker's.

  • This is the inverse of intel trade: knowledge can be taken, not just given.
  • Espionage is its own mini-system with its own success / detection / counter-espionage dynamics — this is the explorer-archetype's combat surface.
  • Espionage need not be limited to knowledge: it can also reveal fleet positions, build orders, and other strategic info. But knowledge of the universe is the foundational reward.

5. Universe-map UI: fog by default, knowledge fills it in

The universe map only displays the cells the current player knows. Unknown cells are blank, or show a generic "unknown" tile. As the player discovers more — through scouting, observation, intel trade, or espionage — the map fills in.

  • The currently-visible "everything" map becomes the admin / debug view, not the default player view.
  • A "shared map" overlay can show what an alliance collectively knows.
  • This reshapes the early game: the first hours are spent discovering the immediate neighbourhood, not surveying a fully-revealed galaxy.

6. Tiered knowledge depth

Knowing that a cell exists is not the same as knowing what is in it.

  • Tier 1: existence — "there is a region at (q, r), called ".
  • Tier 2: stellar-object inventory — "this region has these orbital systems, with these stellar objects".
  • Tier 3: infrastructure — "this region has these built gates, these colonies, this fleet composition".
  • Tier 4: live state — "and the current fleet positions and resource stockpiles".

Each tier costs more to obtain and decays at a different rate (Tier 1 is permanent once learned; Tier 4 is stale within minutes). This creates a natural reason to keep scouting / observing the same cells repeatedly, instead of "find once, forget".

Open Questions

  • Does revealed knowledge decay over time, or is it permanent once obtained? (Tier 1 likely permanent, higher tiers likely decay — but exact rules are open.)
  • How does an alliance share knowledge — automatic full-share, opt-in cell-by-cell, or some middle ground?
  • Should there be a rumour mechanic — partial / unreliable knowledge a player has heard about but not confirmed?
  • Can players lie about their intel (sell false data)? If so, how does the market handle it?
  • Does the universe-map UI need to show the absence of knowledge differently from the absence of a cell? (Empty universe-map cells should look distinct from "I haven't scouted here yet".)
  • What does a fresh player see when they first log in — only their spawn region, or some baseline (their home galaxy, perhaps)?
  • Should there be a public reveal mechanism — global events that surface a cell to everyone simultaneously (a supernova, a galactic-scale event)?
  • How does this layer interact with the gate-target list in Player-Built Connectivity? Confirm the relationship: a gate's targetable set is the intersection of (reach radius) and (known cells). Both must hold.